Well, this is something I've run into several times back in the day when I was holding the line. It's never pleasant to do intel on these motherfuckers.
:powerlevel: aside, I got some good news and some bad news.
The good news are: Yes, this looks like a huge sting op. That "Would you take the anti-pedo pill" post is by-the-book pedo bait. They're trying to lure the weakened into spilling info. If someone replies with "yeah, well, maybe because it's kind of bad" they'll go down on the guy with everything they got. The agents will pose as supportive users to hook him and lure him out of the deepweb. If they are lucky, the pedo will have shared material, mail addresses or even IRL friends. It's a good way to get a trail because, you see, they don't look for the random sicko with a fetish for kids, they are going after the big content producers, the Thai/Chinese/Filipino connections. Those are the big monsters, the ones with cages full of kidnapped kids in shitty dungeons, drugged up their asses and being constantly raped. The CP always comes from somewhere and most of the times it isn't homebrew.
The bad news are: The law won't touch 95% of these assholes. Why? Well, lots of things changed since the "To Catch a Predator" and "Yahoo Chat bait" times. Lots of unnecessary gunshots too. Most of the time is either bullshit posts or domestic abusers witch are a bitch to prove and once you've shaken the nest, all the rats will run to the nearest hole. They need to be subtle and make them comfortable enough for them to confess. If it is too flagrant or if they have graphic proof of the abuse, they'll go down on him silently but most of the time the victim will defend the abuser so it's useless to try and catch them without solid evidence. The sex cults do exist but there's a fair chance of the stories to be complete bullshit. It's like taking ADF's anonymous word on his made up country. I'm not saying they don't exist, they do but they are either an ultra-religious group with ties to politicians or super closed tribes in the middle of nowhere. not really worth it.
So that's that. Admire from afar, let them implode and use Internet profilactics if getting too close.